News

WildAid South Africa staffer Adam Welz recently penned an authoritative op-ed for Ensia the challenges in saving Africa's rhinos. As detailed often on this blog, poaching in South Africa has reached alarming levels: 1,215 rhinos were killed in the country last year, compared with 448 in 2011 and 83 in 2008.

Welz writes:

The high-profile plight of [rhinos] has brought forth a bewildering array of proposed solutions, many of which trigger serious ethical dilemmas, risk unintended and troubling consequences or rely on unproven technology. We’re charging headlong into an era in which new technology may allow us to save species once considered doomed, but also in which threats come in previously unimaginable forms that mainstream wildlife protectors cannot handle. ...

... The steps being taken to save southern white rhinos from the relentless onslaught of ever more organized poachers and traffickers — who sell their horns for extraordinary sums in Asia to consumers who believe that rhino horn cures cancer and other ailments and businesspeople seeking status symbols — are no less fraught with uncertainty.

As Hong Kong lawmakers show increasing leadership in calling for an end to the ivory trade, over 100 people took to the streets over the weekend in a peaceful, student-led protest of several ivory retailers — none of whom were displaying valid licenses for their stocks.

WildAid’s Alex Hofford was on hand to film the rally, Hong Kong’s largest to date and the fifth in a series of youth-organized protests in one of the world’s largest ivory markets. Over the past year, four Hong Kong retailers pulled ivory products from their shelves following protests outside their stores.

The young activists, ages 10 to 12, held placards and shouted slogans on Saturday as they called for members of the public to stop buying elephant ivory and for the Hong Kong government to ban the city's ivory trade. The students from Hong Kong’s ESF Clearwater Bay School, ESF Kennedy School, ESF West Island School and Canadian International School protested several retailers on Hollywood Road and Queen’s Road Central in Sheung Wan district.

Last year, WildAid reported that an estimated 150,000 manta and mobula rays were killed in 2013 so their gill rakers could be sold as part of a growing trade, mostly at the markets of Guangzhou, China.

Known as peng yu sai, the gill rakers — cartilage filaments used to filter food from the water column — are not part of Traditional Chinese Medicine, but they are used in the preparation of a soup-like "health tonic." Merchants advertise a wide range of unproven health benefits and claim that peng yu sai can treat everything from skin rashes to cancer.

A California bill that would prohibit nearly all in-state ivory sales cleared its first hurdle on Tuesday, passing out of a state assembly committee on a 10-2 vote.

Experts testifying in support of the bill, AB 96, included WildAid executive director Peter Knights, who told members of the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee that the legislation’s passage “sends a clear message that ivory has no value in California.” Read more...

SAN FRANCISCO (March 3, 2015) — Chinese consumer awareness of the ivory and rhino horn trade’s devastating impact on African wildlife has grown rapidly over the past two years, the result of major public awareness campaigns by wildlife organizations and state media, according to two new reports from WildAid, the African Wildlife Foundation and Save the Elephants as part of their joint campaigns in China.